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The Untapped Power of Indian Professors: Why Are Our PhDs Not Building the Next Blockchain?

Why Are Our PhDs Not Building the Next Blockchain?

India prides itself on having one of the world’s largest pools of PhDs, especially in fields like computer science, engineering, and the sciences. Our universities overflow with highly credentialed professors who have met rigorous requirements to earn their doctorates. And yet, if you ask: What transformative products, tools, or companies have emerged from this academic engine?—the silence is deafening.

This is not merely a rhetorical complaint. Let’s do the math.

Consider that many professors in India’s private and public universities earn salaries ranging from ₹1 lakh to ₹3 lakh per month. Even conservatively estimating 1 lakh per month for 12 months across thousands of professors yields an annual investment of hundreds of crores. The state (through government universities) and society (through student fees) pay this with the expectation that professors will not just teach, but generate knowledge, innovation, and impact.

And yet, what is produced?

The Problem of Publish-or-Perish Without Impact

Indian academia is under a "publish-or-perish" regime. To retain their jobs or earn promotions, professors must publish a certain number of papers. In practice, this has led to:

  • A flood of mediocre or even plagiarized papers.

  • Professors outsourcing paper-writing or paying for predatory journal publications.

  • A focus on quantity over quality.

It’s not that writing papers is inherently bad. Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper was only nine pages. But its ideas transformed the world. A paper is supposed to be a seed for real-world impact, entrepreneurial ventures, and policy change.

So why are our professors, with their advanced degrees and institutional support, not creating the Indian equivalents of such revolutionary ideas?

The Capability Question

Let’s be direct: Are they even capable of doing it?

Yes, many Indian professors are technically capable. They have the degrees, the exposure, and increasingly the tools (open-source software, cloud infrastructure, datasets) to solve real problems. But they often lack:

  1. Incentives for Impact: Promotions reward publications, not products. Patents and startups count for little in the academic performance metrics.

  2. Collaboration Culture: Research often happens in isolation, with little industry or government linkage. In contrast, Stanford and MIT have entire ecosystems that support professors to turn research into companies.

  3. Risk Appetite: University jobs are secure. Entrepreneurship is risky. Few are willing to jeopardize their position.

  4. Leadership Support: Institutional heads often discourage politically sensitive or system-challenging research. Building a tool to monitor MLAs and MPs, for example, would be seen as "controversial" rather than "innovative."

A Missed Opportunity: Fixing Governance with AI

Let’s take a concrete example.

Imagine uniting every computer science department in India behind a grand challenge: Build an AI system that monitors elected officials’ performance.

  • Use satellite images to track road quality, irrigation projects, and construction in real time.

  • Use public budget data to identify fraud or inefficiency.

  • Build predictive models to flag underperforming constituencies.

Such a project would:

  • Improve governance and transparency.

  • Build world-class AI and data engineering talent in our universities.

  • Create companies and products that could be exported to other democracies.

Is this impossible? No. It is entirely feasible with existing technology. But is it being done? No.

Why the Silence?

The silence is not due to a lack of intelligence. It is a systemic failure of vision and incentive.

  • Administrative Myopia: Colleges want to maintain accreditation, not rock the boat.

  • Fear of Political Backlash: Challenging the status quo can invite trouble.

  • Short-term Metrics: Paper counts matter more than patents or prototypes.

  • Lack of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Few universities have real startup incubators focused on faculty spinouts.

A Call to Action

It’s time for a new social contract between Indian society and its professors.

If we are paying lakhs per month per professor, we should demand more than classroom lectures and journal papers. We should demand:

✅ Research that solves India’s grand challenges.
✅ Tools and startups emerging from faculty labs.
✅ Collaboration across departments and universities.
✅ Courage to tackle real-world, politically sensitive problems.

We don’t need every professor to be Satoshi Nakamoto. But surely in a country of 1.4 billion people, with tens of thousands of computer science PhDs, we can produce someone who can write a nine-page paper that changes the world.

If not, then what is the point of all these PhDs?

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